Pettit Funds

Back to the world of finance.

Subprime loans, if you are following the financial news, seem to be the reason for all that is wrong with the world. Well, according to the folks at Vineyard National Bancorp (VNBC)–today’s stock pick–they don’t have any exposure to subprimes (although they acknowledge that, according to Reuters, “…it sees a potential loss exposure of $3 million to $6 million from the softening of the residential real estate market. The provision for loan loss will be recorded in the fourth quarter, Vineyard National said in a statement.”)

Very low P/E ratio of about 5. Some analysts like ‘em, some don’t. I do.

Good luck!

As pop culture portrays it, getting older means growing more conservative - in dress, politics and tolerance. In investing, the popular image is that of the little old man or woman living off dividends, bonds and CDs. And the advice of the financial planning industry for the most part has reinforced that idea - you can’t afford a loss, so be conservative.

But recently, more financial pros have begun to realize that because retirements that once lasted years can now easily go for decades, you can’t give up the potentially higher growth that stocks offer.

And the emerging science of neuroeconomics has shown that, contrary to what you might expect, changes in your brain make you better able to handle risk in old age than you were as a young adult. All this has big implications for how you should invest. [Rest of article]

  The extreme volatility in the market of late churned the universe of stocks enough to sift out three new faces in my stock screen this week. On the other hand, yesterday was my 2nd worst day ever in the market (and my last pick 3 weeks ago, as some of you may be aware, is down 24%–sorry about that), so I have, perhaps, lost a little self-confidence.

And I believe that you will find the nature of these three picks is–well, startling. So what I’m going to do is take smaller positions in all three, hoping that the added diversification makes up for the potential wackiness of the investments themselves!

First pick is NVE Corporation (NVC), a nanotechnology (huh?) company that “develops and sells devices that use spintronics, a nanotechnology that relies on electron spin rather than electron charge to acquire, store and transmit information. The Company is a licensor of spintronic magnetoresistive random access memory technology (MRAM), which has the potential to revolutionize electronic memory.” Got that? My portfolio is light on tech stocks, so–this is one that I’m going with.

The next one is a company I mentioned here a couple of months ago: Air France - KLM (AKH). The stock is a little cheaper than when it first caught my attention, so I’m jumping in. Which makes my next pick particularly weird. Another airline: Republic Airways Holdings (RJET).

I’m not comfortable putting all of my eggs into any one of these three baskets. The market is just too strange lately. So I’m going to close my eyes, hold my nose, and go thirdsies with all three of them.

Good luck!